June 5, 2008

Tomorrow is a day off! And Internet finally works. . .

Hello everyone,

Happy Thursday to you all. Not quite as hot today, the AC has managed to work for more than a couple of hours. Very luxurious.

I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on television here. My understanding is that after the Taliban left (they very much didn’t like TV—among other modernities—and having a set was illegal), the people wasted no time getting hooked back up. Looking out over the rooftops, I’m reminded of Rick Bragg (a guy from Alabama who wrote for the New York Times) and his describing how in rural Alabama, even the most dilapidated trailers always had a huge satellite dish in the yard. He referred to the dishes as the “Alabama state flower.”

It’s sorta the same thing in Herat. A nearby building is mud and brick, outside vat for clothes washing; its inhabitants go up to the roof at night to sleep—and it has three satellite dishes. Good thing they’re smaller than when Bragg was writing about the Alabama variety. But like a lot of things here, an interesting contradiction.

The range of television programs is fascinating. They originate from all over the Middle East. There is an Afghan station, sort of their version of a national network. It has news programming, mostly—in Persian with no subtitles, so I can’t follow much.

Many (many) Indian shows of the Bollywood variety: soap operas (including one that is a near-copy of Dallas), sit-coms, musicals. Most are in Urdu, which many people here can speak or understand. They also have subtitles in English so that if I want to watch one, I won’t miss one bit of cheesy dialogue:

But mother, what shall I do? I love him. He is a prince to me, despite his lowly origins. Whatever am I to do? Oh! Oh! My heart shall break!

This is accompanied by what we would see as very over-the-top emoting, much fierce grimacing, pouting, and raising of the eyes toward Heaven.

There seems to be a sort of physical code for the male actors. A big bushy mustache goes with the “dumb” character, who usually spends a lot of time ogling pretty girls. He may or may not have all his teeth. Sinister guys often have the unibrow (a frightening thing in its own right). The good guys are clean shaven, with hair swept back and up—very dramatic.

The Bollywood channels take up most of the airwaves—especially if you count the Indian music videos. That art form has been copied by just about everyone.

I can select Persian (there’s a whole channel devoted to Persian music videos) and Indian, or an occasional feed from a European or American-style video collection late in the evening. 

The Persian music videos are especially fascinating because of the range. Some are as racy as the US hip-hop videos. Others feature women in head to toe covering—dancing more traditional dances, no gyrating, but definitely dancing. Some have subtitles. Can’t say I’m impressed with the lyrics, but it would make sense that some flavor (not to mention rhyme schemes) gets lost in the translation.

Also can get the Iranian national television feed here. It has a variety of news and cultural programs, including a show teaching people about HIV and AIDS featuring life-size puppets with giant, triangular, black sacks for heads (wide part at the top). I’d think they’d scare anyone off…

If the Iranian announcer is female, she wears a full length black chador and looks very stern, reading from her notes. The best part is the information feed across the bottom of the screen—definitely the government’s point of view, no attempts to camouflage the strong pro-government slant.

In the last couple of days the feed has repeated the recurring Iranian contention that the U.S. is behind the run-up in oil prices and people mistakenly blame the Iranian government. Ahmadinejad is “a hero” of his people and “misunderstood” by the wicked world.

Let’s see, what else? A couple of stations show only mosque services. One is from Mecca, I think (fascinating to watch the thousands of men kneel and rise at precisely the same time). Other religious channels have discussions, readings of scripture, tapes of mullah’s teachings, and singing/chanting of scripture, which is quite beautiful, in a way the calls to prayer are not. No subtitles, except for one station that broadcasts the prayers and the “sermon” in Arabic, with French subtitles.

According to my colleague, the Quran and the services in the mosques use an ancient, archaic form of Arabic that isn’t used in Arabic speaking countries today. Maybe like the difference in Shakespearean English and modern English.

There are some English stations—National Geographic, Animal Planet, and CNN. The CNN feed comes from Hong Kong and is very international: world news, business, soccer, cricket, etc. There is also a movie channel that has been showing Star Wars reruns with Persian subtitles. R2D2's "speech" is transliterated as something like !!!!!!!!! Oh, and wrestling. Go figure.

I’ve found one game show (Deal or No Deal, in Urdu) and occasionally there are PBS children’s shows in Persian. Some stations (like PBS) seem to disappear and reappear. Another is the Al-Jazeera English channel, which provides excellent news coverage for the region. Currently it’s somewhere in satellite-land, but not here. Most channels don’t run 24 hours, signing on at 6:00 a.m. and off anywhere between 10 and (I’m assuming) 12. When there are a lot of power ins and outs, the satellite freaks out and shows only a very grainy version of the Afghan network.

Now don’t think I’ve been sitting here and doing nothing but watching TV. Nah. But I do channel surf quite a bit when taking a break and having a cup of chai, and I’ve had fun looking at bits and pieces. The Bollywood dramas are too painful to look at for long—about 3 or 4 minutes is enough.

Work continues busy. We’re trying to get a pre-proposal put together to run by some contacts in Kabul, and also writing a progress report for our work here. A couple of male students stop by fairly often. One is hoping I can find free material on the Internet that will help with his pronunciation. The other just likes to talk. He's a hoot. Their English instructor seems to have disappeared...no one seems to know where he is.

The women engineering students stop by almost every day and ask lots of questions, mostly about how life is like for women in the U.S. Today’s questions were about how old women usually are when they marry (16 is not unusual here) and whether women sometimes marry younger men. When I told them that many women and men in our country wait until their late 20s or even 30s to get married, they were shocked. Shocked!

Of course, this culture does not condone premarital sex. Women who are accused of it (called adultery, whether the parties are married or not) go to jail, and the prisons for women are not remotely pretty.

Like a lot of other places, the men involved don’t seem to be punished or ostracized for their involvement. Sigh.

I’ve started to refer to one of the women as “the dictionary” because if the others can’t remember an English word, they turn to their friend, ask in Dari, and she looks to the heavens, breathes in, closes her eyes, then calmly produces the English word. I suspect her vocabulary is much more developed but she’s more hesitant to speak. She thinks being called a dictionary is very funny.

I’ve also “acquired” a group of young men in the English Literature program who want to talk about composition and nonfiction writing. They said I could call them “the four junior guys.” So I’m trying to find some material online for them. Now if I can just get the Internet to work long enough to search for stuff…it has its days, and this seems to be one of them. Can send a few emails but more than a screen or two of searching and pfffft.

Hope you all are doing well. We have heard quite a bit on CNN about Hillary and Barack but not much other news—so let me know what’s going on with you and yours.

Discuss these notes from Afghanistan. 

About the Author: Beth Richards is the Director of Rhetoric and Professional Writing at the University of Hartford. Responses and questions about her experiences and the program can be sent to her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Photo Credits: © 2008, Beth Richards